Midnight's Children
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Narrated by:
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Lyndam Gregory
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By:
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Salman Rushdie
About this listen
Man Booker Prize Winner, 1981
Salman Rushdie holds the literary world in awe with a jaw-dropping catalog of critically acclaimed novels that have made him one of the world's most celebrated authors. Winner of the prestigious Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children tells the story of Saleem Sinai, born on the stroke of India's independence.
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Critic reviews
“Burgeons with life, with exuberance and fantasy . . . Rushdie is a writer of courage, impressive strength, and sheer stylistic brilliance.” (The Washington Post Book World)
“A marvelous epic . . . Rushdie’s prose snaps into playback and flash-forward . . . stopping on images, vistas, and characters of unforgettable presence. Their range is as rich as India herself.” (Newsweek)
“Extraordinary . . . one of the most important [novels] to come out of the English-speaking world in this generation.” (The New York Review of Books)
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The Confessions of Max Tivoli
- By: Andrew Sean Greer
- Narrated by: Brian Keeler
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Max Tivoli is uniquely cursed. His mind ages normally, but he is born with the withered body of a 70-year-old man, and his body ages in reverse. Despite this torment, Max manages three times to cross paths with Alice, the woman who captures his heart. Because he appears to be a different person each time they meet, Max has three chances for true love.
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odd premise, but it works!
- By Sean Dunnahoo on 03-03-04
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Palace of Tears
- By: Julian Leatherdale
- Narrated by: Ming-Zhu Hii
- Length: 15 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The dazzling story of family, passion, secrets and vengeance, woven through the hardships of both World Wars and revealing the intriguing history of the Palace, the opulent Blue Mountains hotel famed for its luxury and mysterious owner. A sweltering summer's day, January 1914: the charismatic and ruthless Adam Fox throws a lavish birthday party for his son and heir at his elegant clifftop hotel in the Blue Mountains. Everyone is invited except Angie, the girl from the cottage next door.
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Distractingly bad acting by narrator!
- By Bunny on 01-30-16
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The Space Between Us
- By: Thrity Umrigar
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling author Thrity Umrigar won the Nieman Fellowship and earned a finalist spot for the PEN/Beyond Margins award with The Space Between Us. Set in modern-day India, this evocative novel follows upper-middle-class Parsi housewife Sera Dubash and 65-year-old illiterate household worker Bhima as they make their way through life. Though separated by their stations in life, the two women share bonds of womanhood that prove far stronger than the divisions of class or culture.
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A Story that stays with you
- By gardener97 on 04-25-15
By: Thrity Umrigar
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Birds Without Wings
- By: Louis de Bernieres
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 23 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Birds Without Wings is the story of a small town in Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire told in the richly varied voices of the men and women (Armenians, Christians, and Muslims) whose lives are intertwined and rooted there: Iskander, the potter and local fount of wisdom; Philotei, the Christian girl of legendary beauty, courted almost from infancy by Ibrahim the goatherd, a great love that culminates in tragedy and madness; and many more.
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Not for the faint of heart
- By a on 01-03-05
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Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
- By: Kelly Link - editor, Gavin J. Grant - editor
- Narrated by: Sarah Coomes, Nico Evers-Swindell, Shannon McManus, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Imagine an alternate universe where romance and technology reign. Where tinkerers and dreamers craft and recraft a world of automatons, ornate clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that. Where scientists and schoolgirls, fair folk and Romans, intergalactic bandits, and intrepid orphans - decked out in corsets, clockwerk suits, and tall black boots - solve dastardly crimes, escape from monstrous predicaments, consult oracles, and hover over volcanoes in steam-powered airships.
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MMMM, Orca Bacon
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 09-14-13
By: Kelly Link - editor, and others
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The Accusation
- Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea
- By: Bandi
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The Accusation is a deeply moving and eye-opening work of fiction that paints a powerful portrait of life under the North Korean regime. Set during the period of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il's leadership, the seven stories that make up The Accusation give voice to people living under this most bizarre and horrifying of dictatorships. The characters of these compelling stories come from a wide variety of backgrounds.
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Incredibly powerful
- By Margaret on 09-30-19
By: Bandi
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Wicked
- The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
- By: Gregory Maguire
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 19 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Heralded as an instant classic of fantasy literature, Maguire has written a wonderfully imaginative retelling of The Wizard of Oz told from the Wicked Witch's point of view. More than just a fairy tale for adults, Wicked is a meditation on the nature of good and evil.
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It's not easy being green
- By PangaeaReads on 07-30-08
By: Gregory Maguire
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The Gods of Tango
- A Novel
- By: Carolina De Robertis
- Narrated by: Carolina De Robertis
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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February 1913: seventeen-year-old Leda, carrying only a small trunk and her father's cherished violin, leaves her Italian village for a new home, and a new husband, in Argentina. Arriving in Buenos Aires, she discovers that he has been killed, but she remains: living in a tenement, without friends or family, on the brink of destitution. Still, she is seduced by the music that underscores life in the city: tango, born from lower-class immigrant voices, now the illicit, scandalous dance of brothels and cabarets.
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A rousing tale
- By Jean on 07-24-15
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House of Meetings
- By: Martin Amis
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
There were conjugal visits in the slave camps of the USSR. Valiant women would travel continental distances, over weeks and months, in the hope of spending a night with their particular enemy of the people, in the House of Meetings. The consequences of these liaisons were almost invariably tragic. House of Meetings is about one such liaison.
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Martin Amis at the height of his powers; wonderous
- By Todd on 06-16-15
By: Martin Amis
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Praise Song for the Butterflies
- A Novel
- By: Bernice L. McFadden
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Abeo Kata lives a comfortable, happy life in West Africa as the privileged nine-year-old daughter of a government employee and stay-at-home mother. But when the Katas' idyllic lifestyle takes a turn for the worse, Abeo's father, following his mother's advice, places the girl in a religious shrine, hoping that the sacrifice of his daughter will serve as atonement for the crimes of his ancestors. Unspeakable acts befall Abeo for the 15 years she is held in the shrine. When she is finally rescued, broken and battered, she must struggle to overcome her past.
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Searing!
- By Susie Bright on 09-05-18
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Use an audiobook to really enjoy Satanic Verses
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The novel that set the stage for his modern classic, The Satanic Verses, Shame is Salman Rushdie's phantasmagoric epic of an unnamed country that is "not quite Pakistan". In this dazzling tale of an ongoing duel between the families of two men - one a celebrated wager of war, the other a debauched lover of pleasure - Rushdie brilliantly portrays a world caught between honor and humiliation.
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Should have quit at chapter 2
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Incredible
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The performance is enchanting.
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The Jaguar Smile
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simply Amazing!
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Saleem Sinai is born on the stroke of midnight on 14th-15th August 1947, at the exact moment that India and Pakistan become separate, independent nations. From that moment on, his fate is mysteriously handcuffed to the history of his country. But Saleem's story starts almost 30 years earlier, when his grandfather, Dr Aadam Aziz, falls in love with a woman concealed behind a perforated sheet.
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Should have quit at chapter 2
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Incredible
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Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie combines a ferociously witty family saga with a surreally imagined and sometimes blasphemous chronicle of modern India and flavors the mixture with peppery soliloquies on art, ethnicity, religious fanaticism, and the terrifying power of love. Moraes "Moor" Zogoiby, the last surviving scion of a dynasty of Cochinese spice merchants and crime lords, is also a compulsive storyteller and an exile.
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The Enchantress of Florence ... Why?!
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Great story and great story teller
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A rickshaw driver dreams of being a Bombay movie star; Indian diplomats, who as childhood friends hatched Star Trek fantasies, must boldly go into a hidden universe of conspiracy and violence; and Hamlet's jester is caught up in murderous intrigues. In Rushdie's hybrid world, an Indian guru can be a redheaded Welshman, while Christopher Columbus is an immigrant, dreaming of Western glory. Rushdie allows himself, like his characters, to be pulled now in one direction, then in another.
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Why I Read Rushdie
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Performance
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After drinking an elixir that bestows immortality upon him, a young Indian named Flapping Eagle spends the next 700 years sailing the seas with the blessing - and ultimately the burden - of living forever. Eventually, weary of the sameness of life, he journeys to the mountainous Calf Island to regain his mortality. There he meets other immortals obsessed with their own stasis and sets out to scale the island's peak, from which the mysterious and corrosive Grimus Effect emits.
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Excellent narration, but story is a mess
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By: Salman Rushdie
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Fury
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The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.
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surprisingly good
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Salman Rushdie is widely considered one of a handful of truly great living writers. The internationally acclaimed, Booker Prize-winning author's storytelling shines in this epic love story, a modern retelling of the myth of Orpheus.
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Okay, Salmon, We get that you're a genious already
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Victory City
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In the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for a goddess, who begins to speak out of the girl’s mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana’s comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga—“victory city”—the wonder of the world.
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Rushdie never fails to engage.
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Quichotte
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Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where “Anything-Can-Happen.” Meanwhile his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own.
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The Best Narration I have Ever Heard
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Knife
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On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black—black clothes, black mask—rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are. What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond.
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Triumph of Life
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Languages of Truth
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Salman Rushdie is celebrated as “a master of perpetual storytelling” (The New Yorker), illuminating truths about our society and culture through his gorgeous, often searing prose. Now, in his latest collection of nonfiction, he brings together insightful and inspiring essays, criticism, and speeches that focus on his relationship with the written word and solidify his place as one of the most original thinkers of our time.
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SALMAN RUSHDIE
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 07-24-21
By: Salman Rushdie
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Joseph Anton
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- By: Salman Rushdie
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On February 14, 1989, Valentine's Day, Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and told that he had been "sentenced to death" by the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time he heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being "against Islam, the Prophet and the Quran". So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of a police protection team.
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Informative, Timely
- By Lynn on 10-21-12
By: Salman Rushdie
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The Old Drift
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- By: Namwali Serpell
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh, Richard E. Grant, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 24 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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The year 1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond.
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A saga of Africa and African immigrants
- By Books on our Brains Society/ Barbara on 08-02-19
By: Namwali Serpell
What listeners say about Midnight's Children
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Jessica
- 05-10-09
great book, poor narration
The reader overplayed it. I think he was trying to add to the humor in the story and in so doing, killed the funny. Subtlety is a key in these performances. I wish they would have had Simon Vance do it, or Simon Prebble or .... well anyway.
The story itself is funny and touching and provocatve. Historical fiction at its best, telling the story of the times with a wide vision, and at the same time not loosing the thred of a human, personal story. And of course, there's a bit of magic, a bit of destiny... good stuff. I would download it again if they released another performance. Maybe they will get Grimus out soon? I hope.
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23 people found this helpful
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- William M Storm
- 10-13-12
Twin Births of India and the Nose
Though Midnight's Children won the Booker of Bookers, this text is less engaging and, I believe, less successful than The Satanic Verses. While MC tells the story of one particularly magical child, Saleem Sinai, who is writing this story for the purpose of telling his young child, who perhaps retains some magical qualities of his parents. The story is also the narrative of India and Pakistan, and the tensions that have existed since their twin births. While the story of Saleem Sinai takes many turns, the narrative takes its most significant turn when Rushdie unleashes a scathing critique of Indiria Ghandi's leadership during "The Emergency." Rushdie, as he explains in the Preface, was sued for libel over one particular sentence that Ghandi found offensive, regarding her relationship with her son and her role in her husband's demise. While Rushdie removed the offending sentence, this incident proves that his takedown of Ghandi was, in fact, accurate over her power grab. This book demonstrates the necessity of literature, both in how narrative allows for someone to make sense of events and the power of literature as social critique. For anyone interested in serious literature, this book should be engaged with for both the pleasure of literature and the power of literature.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Clare
- 09-13-13
The history of India in one mans face
Where does Midnight's Children rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
I have listened to a lot of books, it is among the best.
What did you like best about this story?
I learned the story of India from the revolution on through an amazing story that allows you be a part of that history. The rhythym and timing of storytelling is amazing.
What about Lyndam Gregory’s performance did you like?
Awesome! The indian accent and the rolling voice was like music. I laughed many times as well and every other emotion.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Every emothion is felt reading this book.
Any additional comments?
Enjoy!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Roman
- 11-30-12
Great Performance
Lyndam Gregory is pitch perfect in his reading. He total inhabits the many characters presented in the novel.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-07-22
Beautifully narrated
Beautifully narrated. The voice is so engaging, it just takes you to the land of midnights children.
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- LizzyBethC
- 12-02-23
The narration was the best!
First and foremost, I am a Midwest white woman and trying to differentiate Indian names on audio proved difficult for me. This book followed listening to A House For Mr. Biswas - both interesting and enlightening, but challenging in very different ways. Thank goodness for Google and Wikipedia in lieu of a college course. Those 2 entities will help make sense of this complicated novel (which can't be pigeonholed into any one genre). It certainly piqued my interest in what exactly went down with India's Independence, followed by Partition, etc.
From the beginning, when someone's tears are described as diamonds, I was entranced. The narrator was arguably one of the best I've heard, capturing the lilt and expression of Indian English, while expressing the words into life in a way we seldom get to hear outside of good theatre. He was marvelous!
So many great/ good things about this story, but I have to admit to having to slog through sections that related more to the history. I love history and I believe a reading in print would have been easier, but this narration is so good, I stand by this audio book for one of your readings. I'm 67, so I'll be moving on to another of The Modern Library's list of the Best English Novels of the 20th Century (this is ranked as #90).
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- David C.
- 01-14-24
The State as a projection of Man
The State as a projection of Man
As his sophomore novel #salmanrushdie attempted to tell the children complicated story of #indiaindependence through #midnightschildren . The story is narrated from the main character's perspective in an autobiographical approach of #saleemsinai who had the unique historical quirk of being born at the stroke of midnight precisely when #india became an independent state and the first thirty years as #pakistan and #bangladesh undergo their own independence wars. Born to a middle class Indian family in #bombay , the story travels across from #kashmir where Saleem's grandparents were born to #agra , #newdelhi , #lahore as his parents followed the lead of many #muslim Indians and relocated to #pakistan to escape the #hindu majority of India.
Salman Rushdie employs #magicalrealism which particularly makes sense with the religious and mythological aspects that pervade Indian culture. At the same time, the book details many well documented historical events of the time. Rusdie's debut novel is generally dismissed though it applied many similar devices. This second novel, however, gave him the fame and recognition previously missed, selling million copies in the just the #unitedkingdom alone. it also earned him the #1981 #bookerprize and landed him at #90 on the #modernlibrarytop100novels which is how it landed on my reading list. It can be a bit difficult to discern one character from another in some of the secondary characters but part of the fun is his frequent literary allusions peppered throughout this very long novel. Rushdie also gave very vivid descriptions of the varied and unique regions that make up the #subcontinent , many on yet another list of mine.
#readtheworldchallenge #globalreadingchallenge #englishliterature #indianliterature #readtheworld
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- Abby Wines
- 07-15-11
magic realism, but a slow listen
The story reminded me of the "magic realism" of One Hundred Years of Solitude. If you enjoy that type of writing, you will enjoy this. The book takes place in India. The main character's life parallel's India's growth as an independent nation, including struggles with Pakistan. There were parts of the book that were fast-paced and extremely engaging, but I found there were also parts that my attention lagged during. I felt that was due to the book itself, not to the narrator.
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- january
- 07-01-13
a magical story about what's his name
I did not give the story three stars because I didn't enjoy it. I gave it three stars because I would need to be a genius, and probably an Indian Historian, to be able to understand it all.
I did like the book though, and for many reasons. The most important being that Salman Rushdie can turn words inside out and upside down and form them into something beautiful that you've never seen before. This book made me feel like what I imagine it would feel like to be in India. The smells, the traffic , the poor people hanging onto buses and trains. He doesn't make things picturesque. He makes things real. Not only the good, but the bad as well. The narrator of the story, Saleem Sinai, doesn't hold back from telling us how things really are. He tells us about his snot, accidentally seeing his mother's woohoo, fighting on the wrong side of things and falling in love with his sister. He is the kind of narrator that most of us are. He forgets things, backtracks, skips ahead, gets muddled. But through it all you learn about his whole family and history, and how the history of India is a part of everything. My favorite character is the grandmother, Reverend Mother. She is absurd, and yet, somehow quite likable. Every time she said "what's his name" it made me smile.
I found Midnight's Children easier to understand than The Satanic Verses. Even though it doesn't flow in chronological order, and the story is often interrupted by Padma, it is not as fantastical or as dreamlike as SV. But there are some similar themes in both books. Rushdie seems to be fond of the good/evil, God/Satan dynamic. Also, reality and non-reality play an equal part.
If you like books that push you, that expand you, that make you question things and look at the world in new ways, then you will like this book. It's not easy, but it is worth it.
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- Steve
- 07-29-10
Long-winded, but worth it!
I had this suggested to me by my Indian-American girlfriend as her favorite book, so I figured it worth a listen. It's hard to really summarize a 24 hour listen, but I found it to be quite enjoyable. At times the asides can get a bit tiresome, and I wasn't a huge fan of his decision to speak directly to the reader as his character (as the author himself, for all intents). It reminded me a bit of opera in its reiteration of important specifics, but I think this actually helped to keep the reader oriented and able to understand the massive, highly detailed story. It is certainly not a light listen in terms of attention (not a good transition from modern spy novels, for example), but due to the occasional backtracking and repetition it allows the listener's focus to be able to drift if just for 30 seconds or a minute. All said, it is quite the epic in terms of the time frame and characters covered, not withstanding the direct and/or allegorical discussions of the young modern India and Pakistan and the struggles of becoming an autonomous state after longstanding imperial rule. But Rushdie does manage to keep it interesting with clever language, wit, and charm. Overall it is certainly a commitment to even listen to this book, but if you give it your attention (and maybe wikipedia some things to help you with context both in terms of location and time!), I think you will find it an engaging, smart, and highly enjoyable piece of historical fiction.
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